In the last week, I had an opportunity to talk to someone about diesel soot, one of my favorite topics. He was an MBA/entrepreneur type, and mentioned how well Caterpillar had done in the IP business. I mentioned the Clyde Bryant story about how ACERT was previously invented. He didn't know what I was talking about. The thought of Clyde Bryant as "Jack the Cat" treeing Caterpillar didn't show up on his radar. It didn't show up in the Lerner/Jaffe book either. A lot of MBA types criticize the patent system without knowing quite how it works.

There has been a further development in the ACERT engine story, documented by Automotive World on 17 August 2010, more than five years after the Bryant saga:

According to a report by Heavy Duty Trucking, a number of fleet owners are suing Caterpillar over alleged performance failings in the company's C15 Acert engines. A Texas lawsuit highlights problems with the C15 Acert engines produced with exhaust emissions equipment designed to meet federal limits imposed in January 2007.

The suit involves 90 Caterpillar-powered trucks run by three fleets, chronicling continual breakdowns, ineffective repairs and financial losses from disrupted operations. The fleet owners are suing Caterpillar, along with the truck and engine dealers who sold and tried to fix the defects. No 2010-spec engines are involved.

It is also reported that another suit against Caterpillar and one other builder is pending in Arkansas.

Of course, the EPA was part of the problem here. As AutomotiveWorld notes:

Many in the industry also place ultimate blame for the situation on the federal EPA, which forced increasingly strict exhaust limits on the industry in a short time frame, while dismissing warnings that the equipment devised to meet the limits couldn't be properly tested and would be very expensive.

(...)

Caterpillar formally withdrew from the North American truck-engine market in late 2009, just before the EPA's 2010 regulations took effect.

In passing, the above-noted MBA/entrepreneur had a little bit to do with the "plagiarize with pride" line that appeared in the Harvard Business Review, which line has been frequently quoted on IPBiz. IPBiz wonders what he thinks about Caterpillar's ACERT engine now [?] And, don't forget the problems in California as to CARB.

0 Comments:

About Me

I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted
in the Capri case in N.D. Ill. An article that I wrote on DNA profiling was cited by the Colorado Supreme Court (Shreck case) and a Florida appellate court (Brim case). I was interviewed by NHK-TV about the Jan-Hendrik Schon affair. I am developing ipABC, an entity that combines rigorous IP analytics with study of business models, to optimize utilization of intellectual property. I can be reached at C8AsF5 at yahoo.com.